Previews

Enter the Matrix

The Matrix movies take on a whole new dimension with Shiny's new game.

You wouldn't think you'd get to the Matrix by bus.

But that's exactly what we're doing tonight, braving the "cold" outside a Los Angeles hotel (O.K., it's 60 degrees) as we wait to board a media shuttle. Amid tight security, we're about to head over to the Warner Brothers studio lot in Hollywood to see the Enter the Matrix video game for the first time. We'll also have a chance to screen the first of the Animatrix short films set within the Matrix universe, and in doing so, get an early glimpse into this summer's sequel, The Matrix Reloaded.

With virtually no information released on the game to date, the general consensus was that the game would be your typical movie tie-in. What we saw was surprising and impressive, to say the least.

How It All Began

The first sign that the night would be quite different from your typical press event came as soon as we got off the bus. Outside the theater, a long carpet lined with paparazzi waited for the Matrix stars to show up, all in attendance for the event.

The evening started with Hollywood legend and The Matrix producer Joel Silver coming out on stage, explaining how all the new materials fit within the Matrix universe. To begin, we were shown The Last Flight Of The Osiris, an amazingly high-quality 9-minute CGI film on the level of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. The similarity is no coincidence: the computer animation was designed and created by Square USA, who also created the movie. (The short is the first of nine that will make up The Animatrix, headed up by a group of seven noted anime directors.)

The short tells the story of the Osiris, a ship in the real world outside the Matrix whose crew discovers that the Sentinels are drilling down through the earth's surface and will soon discover the location of Zion, the last human city. The crew decides they need to warn Zion of the impending threat, and to do so, jacks into the Matrix with hopes of getting a package to the city.

It's important to note the plot of Osiris, because it leads directly into the plot of Enter the Matrix, which picks up a few moments after Osiris and just before Reloaded. The game focuses on two secondary characters from Reloaded, Niobe (Jada Pinkett-Smith) and Ghost (Anthony Wong). While not much info was given on the overall plot, we do know that it mostly runs parallel to Reloaded and weaves its way in and out of the movie -- you may see a character walk offscreen in Reloaded, right into a mission from the game, and then right back into a scene from the movie.

Lawrence Fishburne, aka Morpheus, chats it up outside the party.

Amazingly, almost all of this new material was created by The Matrix writers/directors Larry and Andy Wachowski (who are performing the same role for both sequels). In fact, the Wachowskis wrote the plot for (and directed) the video game, creating an hour's worth of new movie footage, with all of the same actors from the film, including Keanu Reeves, Lawrence Fishburne, and Carrie-Anne Moss.

It's hard to believe: the equivalent of George Lucas writing a script for a Star Wars game and then creating movie footage with all the principal actors and movie sets. But that's exactly what Enter The Matrix will offer, with long full-motion video clips playing at key points during the game, and this footage alone may make the game a must-have for Matrix fans. It won't be necessary to play Enter the Matrix to follow the story of Reloaded, but it will provide a lot more depth to the world, along with explaining a few events that happen offscreen in the film. As Joel Silver put it, "It's a whole new way of telling a story."